Educators, mental health experts sound alarm about time youth spend on their screens

Educators and mental health experts are sounding the alarm about too much time spent in front of cell phone screens.

It's been a month since the Quebec government banned cell phones in classrooms. While it's too early to see if the ban is working, Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says it's time to take a look beyond just the classroom as studies increasingly show there's a parallel between screen time and mental health.

"The issues are global and a lot of democracies are asking themselves how do we protect the health of our kids. Interesting answers will come from around the world," Plamondon said in Quebec City.

He's not alone in thinking this way. Jean-Francois Harvey is a sports medicine expert who co-authored a book with renowned Quebec outdoors sports promoter Pierre Lavoie, called Faut que ça Bouge.

"85 per cent of the time, [for] a teenager, now is spent on screens, so there's less time spent on important things like social relationships, like physical activities, less time sleeping," Harvey told CTV News.

Researchers have already linked the increase in obesity to time spent playing video games or using their cell phones and tablets. And too much screen time can also affect their mental health.

"There are studies that show that for kids who are in elementary schools if they spend three hours in front of a screen versus one hour on the screen, there will be a 30 per cent more chance to have depression. And if you go five hours and above, it's 71 per cent more likely to have a depression," said Dr. Perry Adler, a professor of psychology at McGill University's Department of Family Medicine.

The biggest culprit, says Adler, who also specializes in childhood depression, is social media.

"People engage in what's called upper-comparison where they see curated images of what reality really is. What catches eyeballs is people seeing interesting things that as a result the observers says, 'Wow, I'm not as interesting, talented or pretty or smarter as these people,' and they consequently feeling diminished," Adler said.

In some cases, young people glued to their screens might not be able to develop the social skills needed when they move into adulthood. According to Stephane Villeneuve, who teaches at the faculty of education at the Univesité du Québec à Montreal, the lack of interpersonal contacts can place young adults in awkward situations if they haven't spent enough time interacting with real people face-to-face.

"When they interact with people, it gets really complicated, and it's harder for them to communicate adequately," Villeneuve said.

Most experts agree that parents have to set strict rules and an example.

Harvey says a good start is for parents to put down their own devices and turn off their home Wi-Fi during family time, at the dinner table, or even past a specific time.